Life.com presents us with a slideshow of “Baseball’s Ugliest Uniforms. Ever.”
I respectfully disagree on some of them. Many include uniforms from the 1970s. Those unis were bright, colorful and some would even say gaudy. They reflected the times when people sought to differentiate themselves and saw no shame in it.
Later, the late 90s and the 00s brought us the era of conformity and corporate standardization in term of uniforms. Even the smallest change brings the loudest call of condemnation. The other symptom of recent times is the constant change in uniforms or excuses to bring out a new line uniforms presumably to increase the bottom line for MLB.
So yes, getting back to my original point, I do like the older 70s uniforms. They may be gaudy from today’s perspective but they hearken back to a day when I grew up with the game.
Besides, if you want to talk about ugly baseball uniforms, I’m surprised Life.com didn’t have THESE on their list:
Sorry Sox fans but those WERE ugly.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But I agree with the original premise: The Houston Astros uniform in the picture are the ugliest uniforms in Major League history. Atlanta (the ones with the lower-case letters) in the same time period was no day at the beach, either.
I think the White Sox only wore that exact uniform for one game. The trivia question going around a few years ago was: Who is the only guy in history to pitch in a Major League game while wearing SHORT PANTS?